


Bring Me Back

by prototyping



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Dimitri Week 2019, Friendship, Gen, Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-18
Updated: 2019-12-18
Packaged: 2021-02-26 09:07:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21847171
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/prototyping/pseuds/prototyping
Summary: Ingrid and Dimitri meet for the first time since the Tragedy, but two broken halves don’t quite make a whole.Done for the prompt “Childhood” for Dimitri Week 2019.
Relationships: Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd & Ingrid Brandl Galatea
Comments: 7
Kudos: 56





	Bring Me Back

Ingrid didn’t normally fuss over her appearance, but now her efforts were downright careless: the clothes she pulled on were wrinkled from where she had haphazardly discarded them the night before, her hair an unbrushed nest that she managed to mildly tame with a rushed, loose ponytail. She spared a glance in the mirror as she passed and was unsurprised to see that her nose was still bright red, the shadows beneath her eyes dark.

She wasn’t pretty when she cried (was anyone?) but a night of tossing and turning, the stress of the unwanted journey to the capital, and stubbornly wasting the morning away in her miserable tangle of sheets hadn’t done her any favors.

Not that it mattered. She didn’t care what anyone might think－why should she?－and if all went well she would slip out and back into her room without hardly being seen. It was just after lunchtime, so odds were good she could snatch some leftovers from the kitchen unnoticed. Despite her low spirits and desire for isolation, her rumbling stomach and the smell of food wafting up from the dining hall were finally too much to bear.

She opened the bedroom door and peeked out into the hallway. It was empty except for the guards making their patrol, but they all knew who she was and had no reason to stop her. She stepped out, closed the door behind her, and set off at a pace as quickly as she dared without being too improper. She was conscious of where she was and wouldn’t risk making her family seem like impolite or ungrateful guests.

It wasn’t her first visit to Fhirdiad’s castle, but it was her first time since the incident. She tried to ignore that train of thought－she tried to think of nothing other than getting to the kitchen and back to her quarters, but everything she passed was a painful reminder that stirred the weight in her chest.

The library where the five of them would crowd as children, reading their favorite tales. A window looking out onto the training yard. The staircase down which Dimitri and Felix had once taken a tumble while play-fighting with wooden swords. The memory of Ingrid checking the prince over for any injuries while yelling at Sylvain for laughing and snapping at Glenn to fetch a healer just in case－it used to bring a nostalgic smile to her face without fail. Now she wished she could forget it and everything it made her feel.

_Father didn’t need to bring me along. I could have gotten “fresh air” back home. I don’t want to be out here. I just want－_

Her throat tightened and she gritted her teeth, fighting back more tears. What she _wanted_ was gone. A month of grief and regrets hadn’t changed that. Nothing ever would, least of all tearing them open anew by bringing her here so soon.

Her head was buzzing so loudly with emotion that she almost missed the quiet sound of something snapping in a room across the hall, as well as the _thud_ that quickly followed. She looked and realized that the door was slightly ajar; otherwise those sounds would likely have gone unnoticed.

Ingrid almost kept going, but her curiosity and concern－what if someone was hurt?－managed to drag themselves out of the deep pool of sadness and self-pity that they had been all but lost in. Trotting across the corridor, she peered inside.

It looked like a recreation room of some sort, small and cozy and lined with soft chairs. She couldn’t see anything out of place, so she pushed the door inward an inch.

It creaked. Loudly.

“Who’s there?”

Ingrid nearly jumped at the immediate question, but her surprise quickly doubled when she recognized the voice. She pushed the door open all the way, momentarily forgetting her antisocial mood.

“Your Highness?”

The prince of Faerghus stood frozen like a startled cat near a desk against the opposite wall. One of the drawers was open and he held what looked like a small, slender knife in one hand.

“Ingrid?”

She opened her mouth to answer but stayed silent as she took the rest of him in. It had been three months since she’d seen him last, and he had changed more in that time than he had in the last three years. That bit of lingering baby fat in his face was gone, his cheeks slender but also a bit sunken, almost sickly. His normally chin-length hair now brushed the tops of his shoulders, and it was unkempt, as though he’d run his hands through it over and over. His bright eyes seemed a couple shades darker, and he didn’t smile in greeting like he always did.

For a moment Ingrid was speechless. Despite being the same age, she’d always thought Dimitri looked younger than her. Now he seemed to have aged without her when she wasn’t looking.

She realized he was staring at her, too, perhaps finding her equally unrecognizable in her current state.

Her gaze dropped to the floor. She knew he’d been hurt in the tragedy－the only survivor, and narrowly so－but she’d only had secondhand news from her father’s correspondence with the capital to know how he was doing, and those had been vague other than _he’s alive and recovering_. She hadn’t sought him out since arriving yesterday, choosing instead to avoid him like she did everyone else. Her selfishness, in hindsight, made her wince.

“Pardon me. I didn’t mean to intrude.” Forcing her eyes up, she noticed that Dimitri’s posture had relaxed, but his expression was grim and distracted, as though he were only half-listening to her.

“It’s alright.” Even his voice was different: lower, stiffer, and as absent as his gaze.

That almost seemed like a dismissal, but now that Ingrid was here, she suddenly didn’t want to leave. Her obligation as his friend aside, this was someone who could at least understand her feelings, who might fill that ache for company without infringing on her grief with comforting words she wasn’t yet ready for. Maybe he felt the same.

She took a tentative step into the room. “Do you need help with something?”

Dimitri blinked at her, staring blankly for a couple seconds and seeming to not understand the question. Then he looked down at the blade in his fist. “No.” Something in his face shifted, as though he didn’t agree with his own response. “...Maybe,” he amended, and his soft voice was more like the one she knew.

Ingrid closed the door, assuming he’d had reason to nearly shut it in the first place, and made her way over to him. For a moment things were almost normal again, with her charging ahead and making a decision when he wavered.

As she neared, she realized he wasn’t holding a knife, but one half of a pair of scissors. He noticed her expression and set it down on the desktop.

“I broke them,” he muttered darkly. Ingrid’s eyes lingered on his face a little longer than intended. The longer she watched him, the more _off_ he felt. It was as though he’d lost those easy social skills he’d always seemed to have and wasn’t sure how to talk to another person.

Then again, hadn’t she been behaving similarly? Despite her family’s best efforts to comfort her, she’d sought isolation as often as possible. She even ignored Sylvain when he visited, pretending not to hear him as he stood outside her bedroom door for an hour straight and tried to coax her out, appealing to her as well as he knew how.

She’d been depressed, angry, moody, and sometimes simply felt nothing, shifting from one emotion to the next without even realizing. Her father meant well in giving her a change of scenery; he hadn’t rebuked her when she insisted on staying in her guestroom rather than accompany him about town. Ingrid knew she wasn’t living up to his expectations－she knew she had been raised to be better than this－but the part of her that once cared about those things was broken. Until now, she had hurt too much to look anywhere but inward.

“That’s alright,” she assured Dimitri, trying to sound more positive than she felt. “We can find another pair. What do you need them for?”

That distracted look in his eyes stayed. “To cut my hair.”

Ingrid was sure her surprise showed. “Oh.”

Dimitri didn’t reply, but opened another drawer to begin rummaging through it. Sensing that she’d overstepped some boundary by asking, Ingrid touched his arm and he immediately went still. “Allow me,” she offered gently.

He did so, and a moment later she withdrew a second pair. The desk seemed to be full of sewing supplies and other such crafting knickknacks. She offered the scissors to him handle-first, but Dimitri hesitated and, again, avoided her eyes.

“...Sorry to ask this. But… I’ll probably just break them again. So…”

She understood. “I can help, if you like. But… your maids would probably do a better job than I can.”

“It’s fine. I just want it cut.”

Not really understanding, but increasingly glad for this odd distraction, Ingrid nodded. “Let’s sit down. I can reach better that way.”

They sat together on the floor with Ingrid on her knees behind him. She hadn’t cut someone else’s hair before, but how hard could it be, really? “Do you want it to look the same as usual?”

“No,” he answered immediately. “Cut it short.”

Ingrid stared at the back of his head. Dimitri had sported the same haircut for as long as she could remember. Curious, she blurted, “Why?”

He was silent.

Despite her mood, Ingrid couldn’t help pressing, “Are you sure, Your Highness? It… seems like such a waste.” She ran her fingers through the sunshine-yellow strands. Were she the type to care about such things, she probably would have envied him a bit; her own hair wasn’t nearly as rich in color and tended to curl when she didn’t braid it. “You could let it grow out some more and－”

“I want it cut,” he said tonelessly. Then, after a short pause, “I can’t… get the smell out.”

_The smell of what?_ she wondered, not having noticed anything herself, but he glanced over his shoulder.

“Please, Ingrid.”

That was all she needed. If this was somehow his way of coping with the tragedy that had shaken their lives, she was in no position to object. At least he was up and _doing_ something, unlike her.

“Yes, Your Highness,” she murmured.

It took her longer than expected. She did her best to make sure his hairline was even, wary of having to cut it _too_ short, and even then she had to make a lot of adjustments. All the while, Dimitri was silent, saying nothing even when she apologized for tugging a little too hard now and again. Once she was more or less satisfied with the back－a bit choppy here and there, but she considered it passable for her first try－she moved to do the sides, and then lastly sat in front of him to do his bangs.

As she brushed the locks from his face, she frowned thoughtfully. “Maybe I should leave it a little long here… and here. If I mess up, it will be a lot more noticeable in the front, so...”

He nodded absently, his eyes fixed on some point between their knees. “Whatever you think is best.”

Watching him, Ingrid was briefly seized by the impulse to take his face in her hands and force his head up. She wanted to look into his eyes and find the source of the strength that kept him from shattering beneath the weight of his remorse－the loss of his parents and friends and personal guard, all while she still felt weak from losing _one_ person.

Selfishly, she almost wished that his cold exterior would break－that he would cry so she could cry with him and they could share that weight together, miserable but understanding, withdrawn from the rest of the world that didn’t _understand._

Instead, she focused on splitting and arranging his bangs into something presentable.

By the time she was done, she could hardly call it a style worthy of royalty. She could see half a dozen loose ends in need of a closer trim, and his hair simply looked too thick over his left ear, but she wasn’t sure how to thin it out without making it look worse.

“Well,” she said slowly, “I think you’ll grow into it. And… someone can fix it up, if you don’t like－”

“I’m sure it’s fine.” Dimitri didn’t sound particularly grateful, but at least he didn’t sound angry, either. He didn’t sound much of anything.

Ingrid set the scissors aside and studied him－not his hair, but _him_. Dimitri had been something of a crybaby when he was really little, and even recently he still had his moments of sulking or just being grumpy. This wasn’t the same. She couldn’t recall ever seeing him look so…

Empty.

Maybe it wasn’t strength, after all.

Maybe he had already shattered.

“Is... there anything else you need?” she asked, distractedly dusting pieces of blond hair from her skirt. She hoped he would say yes. As much as he served as yet another reminder of Glenn’s death, she couldn’t bring herself to push him away for it. It wasn’t his fault.

Dimitri’s expression shifted, but it was still hard to read. Slowly, he reached forward to where her hands were folded in her lap and grasped the cuff of her sleeve. As Ingrid watched, she noticed a couple long scars on the back of his hand. Had those always been there?

“Could you stay?” His voice was so quiet that she almost leaned forward to hear him better, even in the silence of the room. “If you want. It’s…” The corner of his mouth tightened. “...quieter with you here.”

She had no idea what he meant, but asking him didn’t strike her as a good idea. It sounded as though it had taken him a great effort to say it, somehow, and she had never known Dimitri to be weak in that way.

He wasn’t asking for much. He wasn’t ordering her to stay, either, even though he could.

Looking over his scarred knuckles, Ingrid felt another pang of irritation towards herself. What kind of knight would she be if she always collapsed under hardship like this? If she allowed her emotions to weaken her when others needed her? Glenn would have been better than that. He _was_ better than that.

She wouldn’t honor his memory if she didn’t strive to be the best that she could in his place.

She looked up and was surprised to find Dimitri staring at her. Maybe it was just how different he looked overall, but she didn’t think his eyes had been this deep and intense before－as though he were much older than he was, and had seen more than she could begin to imagine.

Only now did the weight of his circumstances finally hit her. Dimitri would be king in just a handful of years, thrust into that heavy responsibility with no example to follow anymore. It was the natural order of things－kings died, princes succeeded them, and the cycle continued－but he would feel the weight of the crown before it even touched his head.

He wouldn’t get to see his father into a comfortable old age.

His children wouldn’t know their grandparents.

Sweet, softhearted Dimitri, who had loved as much as anyone Ingrid had ever known.

_It’s not just about Glenn._

She wasn’t sure where such a gesture fell in terms of propriety, or if she was even allowed to do so now that they were young adults, but Dimitri needed his friend more than his knight-to-be right then.

Tentatively, Ingrid leaned forward to wrap her arms around his shoulders, and then gently pulled him to her.

He stiffened and she immediately doubted the gesture. Besides possibly being improper, she was fully aware that it was out of character for her. She’d always been just as rough as the boys, rarely exchanging contact unless it was a hand up or a playful push. Nothing this gentle, and certainly nothing this personal.

Despite his ripple of surprise, Dimitri didn’t resist. He leaned into her, the full weight of him, and she felt as well as heard his breath leave him in a shudder. Her grip tightened.

“Of course, Your Highness,” she answered softly. “For as long as you need.”

It wasn’t just about him, either. There was Felix, who had lost a brother and knew their pain, as well. His tongue and temper had already gotten him into enough scuffles as it was; now, he would likely need someone to _really_ step up and keep him under control.

And Sylvain…

...Sylvain was a mess who would need more supervision than the other two combined. It irritated her just thinking about it, but it was a familiar feeling, and that made it comforting in its own way.

This was the first time in so long that Ingrid was thinking beyond the walls of her room and the confines of her memories－it scared her, and it still hurt, but it was better than feeling hollow.

Dimitri was still for so long that she figured he would just stay like that, but eventually she felt his arms find her middle, his grasp weak at first. Then his fingers dug into her back, likely bruising, but she pressed her lips together tight and didn’t object.

Instead, she pledged then and there to herself that she would serve and protect him without question from now on－her friend who had reminded her of the things and people to live for, and her future king who was surely worth dying for, if anyone was.


End file.
